Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk

Robert Ford

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• Publié par: seym
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook,
Children's Rhymes, Children's
Games, Children's Songs,
Children's Stories, by Robert Ford,
Illustrated by Kate T. Hill
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Title: Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's
Stories
A Book for Bairns and Big Folk
Author: Robert Ford
Release Date: January 13, 2008 [eBook #24271]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN'S
RHYMES, CHILDREN'S GAMES, CHILDREN'S SONGS, CHILDREN'S
STORIES***

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[Pg 1]Frontispiece.
JINGO-RING.
DRAWN BY KATE T. HILL.
[Pg 2]
Children's Rhymes
Children's Games
Children's SongsChildren's Stories

A Book for Bairns and Big Folk

By ROBERT FORD
Author of "Thistledown," and Editor of "Ballads of Bairnhood,"
"Vagabond Songs and Ballads of Scotland" Etc., etc.
"Auld rhymes and auld chimes
Gar us think on auld times"
—Proverb
PAISLEY: ALEXANDER GARDNER
Publisher to the late Queen Victoria: 1904
[Pg 3]
SECOND EDITION
[Pg 4]
PREFACE.
In offering to the public this collection of Children's Rhymes, Children's Games,
Children's Songs, and Children's Stories—the multitudinous items of which, or
such, at least, as were not living in my own memory, have been gathered with
patient industry, albeit with much genuine delight, from wide and varied
sources—I anticipate for the work a hearty and general welcome, alike from old
and young. It is the first really sincere effort to collect in anything like ample and
exclusive fashion the natural literature of the children of Scotland, and meets
what has long appealed to me as decidedly a felt want. The earlier pages are
occupied with a commentary, textually illustrated, on the generally puerile, but
regularly fascinating Rhymes of the Nursery, the vitality and universal use of
which have been at once the wonder and the puzzle of the ages. This is
followed in turn by a chapter on Counting-out Rhymes, with numerous
examples, home and foreign; which is succeeded, appropriately, by a section of
the work embracing description of all the well-known out-door and in-door
Rhyme-Games—in each case the Rhyme being given, the action being
[Pg 5]portrayed. The remaining contents the title may be left to suggest. I may only
add that the Stories—including "Blue Beard," and "Jack the Giant Killer," andtheir fellow-narratives—ten in all—are printed verbatim from the old chapbooks
once so common in the country, but now so rare as to be almost unobtainable.
Essentially a book about children and their picturesque and innocent, though
often apparently meaningless, frolics, by the young in the land, I am assured, it
will be received with open arms. From the "children of larger growth"—those
who were once young and have delight in remembering the fact—the welcome,
if less boisterous, should be not less sincere. Commend to me on all occasions
the man or woman who, "with lyart haffets thin and bare," can sing with the poet
—
"Och hey! gin I were young again,
Ochone! gin I were young again;
For chasin' bumbees owre the plain
Is just an auld sang sung again."
ROBERT FORD.
287 Onslow Drive,
Dennistoun,
Glasgow.
[Pg 6]
CONTENTS.
page
Rhymes of the Nursery, 9
Counting-out Rhymes, 38
Children's Rhyme-Games, 55
"Merry-ma-Tanzie," 56
"The Mulberry Bush," 57
"A Dis, a Dis, a Green Grass," 58
"Looby-Looby," 59
"I Dree I Droppit it," 60
"Bab at the Bowster," 61
"The Wadds," 63
"The Wadds and the Wears," 65
"The Widow of Babylon," 68
"London Bridge," 69
"The Jolly Miller," 70
"Willie Wastle," 70
"Oats and Beans and Barley," 71
"Hornie Holes," 72
"The Craw," 73
"Neevie-neevie-nick-nack," 73
"Blind Man's Buff," 74
"Water Wallflower," 75
"The Emperor Napoleon," 75
"A' the Birdies i' the Air," 76
"Through the Needle-e'e, Boys," 76
"King Henry," 77 "The Blue Bird," 78
"When I was a Young Thing," 78
"Carry my Lady to London," 79
"A, B, C," 80
"My Theerie and my Thorie," 80
"Glasgow Ships," 81
"Airlie's Green," 83
"Het Rowes and Butter Cakes," 83
"Queen Mary," 84
"Whuppity Scoorie," 85
"Hinkumbooby," 85
"Three Brethren come from Spain," 87
"Here Comes a Poor Sailor from Botany Bay," 90
"Janet Jo," 91
"The Goloshans," 94
Children's Songs and Ballads, 101
[Pg 7] Cock Robin, 101
The Marriage of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren, 104
The North Wind, 109
Little Bo-Peep, 110
The House that Jack Built, 111
Simple Simon, 114
Old Mother Hubbard, 114
Old Mother Goose, 115
The Old Woman and her Pig, 117
A Frog he would a-wooing go, 122
The Carrion Crow, 126
My Pretty Maid, 127
Can ye Sew Cushions? 127
Hush-a-ba Birdie, Croon, 129
Dance to your Daddie, 129
Katie Beardie, 132
The Miller's Dochter, 133
Hap and Row, 133
How Dan, Dilly Dow, 134
Crowdie, 135
Whistle, whistle, Auld Wife, 136
The Three Little Pigs, 137
Cowe the Nettle early, 138
The Wren's Nest, 140
Robin Redbreast's Testament, 141
Children's Humour and Quaint Sayings, 143
Schoolroom Facts and Fancies, 163
Children's Stories, 182
Blue Beard, 184
Jack and the Bean-Stalk, 191 The Babes in the Wood, 205
Jack the Giant Killer, 210
Little Red Riding Hood, 229
Cinderella; or, the Little Glass Slipper, 233
Puss in Boots, 243
Whittington and his Cat, 249
Beauty and the Beast, 259
The Sleeping Beauty, 274
[Pg 8]
RHYMES OF THE NURSERY.
Writing on the subject of nursery rhymes more than half a century ago, the late
Dr. Robert Chambers expressed regret because, as he said, "Nothing had of
late been revolutionised so much as the nursery." But harking back on the
period of his own childhood, he was able to say, with a feeling of satisfaction,
that the young mind was then "cradled amidst the simplicities of the
uninstructed intellect; and she was held to be the best nurse who had the most
copious supply of song, and tale, and drollery, at all times ready to soothe and
amuse her young charges. There were, it is true, some disadvantages in the
system; for sometimes superstitious terrors were implanted, and little pains
were taken to distinguish between what tended to foster the evil and what
tended to elicit the better feelings of infantile nature. Yet the ideas which
presided over the scene," he continues, "and rung through it all the day in light
gabble and jocund song, were simple, often beautiful ideas, generally well
expressed, and unquestionably suitable to the capacities of children.... There
was no philosophy about these gentle dames; but there was generally endless
kindness, and a wonderful power of keeping their little flock in good humour. It
never occurred to them that children were anything but children—'Bairns are
[Pg 9]just bairns,' my old nurse would say—and they never once thought of beginning
to make them men and women while still little more than able to speak." They
did not; and, in the common homes of Scotland, they do not to this hour. The
self-same rhymes and drollery which amused Dr. Chambers as a child are
amusing and engaging the minds and exercising the faculties of children over
all the land even now. I question if there is a child anywhere north of the Tweed
who has not been entertained by
Brow, brow, brinkie,
Ee, ee, winkie,
Nose, nose, nebbie,
Cheek, cheek, cherrie,
Mou, mou, merry,
Chin, chin, chuckie,
Curry-wurry! Curry-wurry! etc.
Or the briefer formula, referring only to the brow, the eye, the nose, and the
mouth, which runs:—
Chap at the door,
Keek in,
Lift the sneck,
Walk in.Walk in.
And it was only the other evening that I saw a father with his infant son on his
knee, having a little hand spread out, and entertaining its owner by travelling
from thumb to little finger, and repeating the old catch:—
This is the man that broke the barn,
This is the man that stole the corn,
This is the man that ran awa',
This is the man that tell't a',
And puir Pirly Winkie paid for a', paid for a'.
[Pg 10]
As well as its fellow-rhyme:—
This little pig went to the market,
This little pig stayed at home;
This little pig got roast beef,
This little pig got none;
This little pig cried, Sque